Performance cars usually rely on large displacement engines that deliver high power. But technologies such as turbocharging and direct injection have changed things nowadays and Ford is looking at a more powerful version of its 1.0 litre EcoBoost engine.

Ford officially introduced its 1.0 litre turbocharged three cylinder EcoBoost engine late last year. It was developed by Ford engineers in the United Kingdom and the engine generates around 123bhp. The engine will be used in the Ford Focus and a 100bhp version will be introduced in Ford models such as the C-Max, Grand C-Max and B-Max.

Normally, we won’t associate performance with an engine which has lesser displacement volume than some soft drinks bottle. But the regular version of Ford’s 1.0 litre EcoBoost engine generates more than 100bhp per litre and that is rather impressive. Now, Ford is working on the engine and they are targeting a power figure closer to the 200bhp per litre mark.

Ford is targeting around 177bhp version of the engine and the engine’s extra power will be generated through an electric supercharger which will feed the turbocharger and the turbo used is from the company’s 1.6 litre EcoBoost engine. Torque amount is currently unknown but an engine set-up like that is able to deliver around 271Nm.

Even though 177bhp from a forced induced 1.0 litre engine is rather impressive, that horsepower figure is not really enough to power most of Ford’s performance flagship models such as the Focus ST. But, most probably it will be used in a smaller sized performance vehicle such as the Fiesta ST. ford has not revealed when they are going to officially launch the engine.